Coraline is the kind of girl who, when told to stay away from the old well in the garden, spends days searching for it just so she can stay away from it properly. She lives a humdrum life with parents who are rather more interested in their work than in their daughter. So when Coraline finds a mysterious door in the drawing room opening on to a brick wall, and when she is warned never to go through that door, well . . . Coraline is a curious child. On the other side of the door she finds her "other" mother, taller and thinner than the real one, with hooked red nails, and she finds her creepy "other" father, whose eyes are black buttons just like those of his wife. The two "other" parents want nothing more than to keep Coraline with them, sew button eyes over her real ones, and stay together as a loving family for ever after. Enchanting and creepy by turns, Coraline is a very grown-up fairy tale for all ages, a story that reads as if Alice's Adventures in Wonderland had been rewritten by Lemony Snicket in a particularly dark and twisted mood.